the great bedroom furniture re-arranging of 2011

our bedroom furniture has been in the exact same place ever since we moved here in 2005. we felt a little constrained by the air vent & tv cable placement.  last week we got an ikea expedit bookcase for the living room (record storage!) so we did a little switcheroo in that room. the yellow painted glass-door cabinet was temporarily moved into the bedroom.  then i started thinking about moving the bed to the wall with the windows, and a quick measurement proved that our queen-sized bed would fit (and it wouldn't block the air vent).  and the tv could move walls because we downgraded our cable package and got rid of the receiver in the bedroom.

of course, i decide to do all of this furniture moving 1) at 10 pm 2) when the mister is out of town. i guess adrenaline kicked in, and i have bruises all over my legs and a backache to prove it.  we had discussed making the painted yellow cabinet our living room entertainment center, so i moved that back into the living room, unhooked all the tv stuff, and tried it out. it was way too tall, so back into the bedroom it went. i also had to remove all the books from my bookcase in order to move it. and all of the mister's books too.

 the bed used to be on this wall

then the dresser with the tv lost one of the wheels/casters, and that brought my HGTV-inspired decorating dreams to a halt.  our dressers are part of my great uncle's furniture set and are probably about 70 years old. we no longer use the headboard because it's full size, but we do still have the 2 dressers and nightstand. seems like years of moving from dorm room to apartment to duplex and back again {coupled with the extremely heavy tv on top} finally took it's toll on the poor old thing.   anyway, at this point, it was around 1 am so i finished up what i could, took a benedryl (thanks, dust!) and went to bed. it was strange falling asleep facing a different direction (and my mind couldn't stop racing with what i could do to fix the dresser situation).

this morning, i measured the caster and figured that a cinder block was the PERFECT size to use on the wonky dresser. yay!  so i finished the final piece of my decorating puzzle (and went to target and got a new brown hamper to take the place of our silly plastic ikea one).

i plan on hanging up some more art eventually (especially on the wall below) and probably re-doing some of the knick-knacks, but i feel pretty happy with it.

 i am a little concerned that the yellow painted cabinet + the quilt look a little shabby chic/country cottage (barf!!!)...opinions?  it doesn't seem that way in person, but in the photos it kinda does.

i also would like to re-paint the room soon. when we painted a few years ago, it was so much better than the original puke-green color that i failed to realize the color is kind of baby-boy-nursery-blue.

sorry i don't have any "before" pictures.

new subway tile in the kitchen!

backsplash: BEFORE

one of my least favorite things about our house was the half-assed backsplash behind the sink, which was made out of those sticky floor tile squares. i hated it. yet, it took us almost 6 years to do something about it.   my dad & i both came to the conclusion that we loved the look of white subway tiles & hired his neighbor's brother-in-law (who used to build log cabins in colorado) to install them for us.  we both wavered back and forth on the grout color - settled on gray at first, but after talking to carolyn, i realized i really wanted white.  so i changed my mind. and then my dad did too.  i am super happy with the results.

new backsplash: AFTER! 

behind the stove before & after:

salt & pepper shakers

and now for an update on my salt & pepper shaker collection. i've run out of room atop my kitchen cabinets, so i've been more selective about purchasing/displaying them. my dad (bless his heart) buys me gas station s&p shakers whenever he goes on road trips, but i don't have the heart to tell him i am only interested in old ones. anyway...my interests now lean toward the weird, bizarre vintage ones.

not that weird, but cute: 

mama polar bear holding her cub (estate sale, murfreesboro, $2)

Can't really tell what's going on here:

c

cats? with monocles? (estate sale, murfreesboro, $2)

JFK on Rocking Chair (yes...this is meant to be JFK. it says so on his rocking chair)

i like how his eyes make him look slightly doofy (antique store, nolensville, $12)

Master Bathroom re-do

realized i never shared before-and-afters from the "great snowstorm of 2010 master bathroom re-do"(back in january). i removed the grody wallpaper, primed the walls and painted them a nice greyish color ("100 acre raindrops" from the disney color collection by behr from home depot). it was a little more purple than i expected, so i was afraid it was going to clash with the brownish counter & shower, but i found a good shower curtain (on sale from urban outfitters) that actually tied the room together.  i wasn't 100% in love with the color but kept it anyway, thinking we were gonna put the house on the market soon. but...doesn't look like selling is in our near future, so i guess i'm just going to live with it for now.

antique store treasures

the mister & i went to southern indiana to visit with his family & to "get away from it all" for a few days. the antique/thrift/junk stores seem more untouched compared to the places around nashville, plus you can tell the strong european presence in the community based on some of my acquisitions:

wooden finger puppets, still in the original box. made in czechoslovakia

dutch painted shelf/bar (we'll hang it in the kitchen)

plastic tea canister

irish (?) carved wooden monk/saint dudes

green glass owl pitcher and owl trivet

record carrying case (for my future career as a wedding dj -ha!)

holland dairy metal tray

new desk!

i've been trying to straighten up the office (again...) after R was able to move out some of his music gear. we put about half our CD collection away in storage boxes and the next task: replace our glass top desk with a different desk. i didn't know what exactly i wanted - just something old and cool. so i've been perusing craigslist daily in hopes that i would find "it" and if i found "it", "it" would still be available. i saw an ad for a vintage steel tanker desk and the guy responded quickly. still available! AND...he was willing to deliver (for free!). that's a major score because we don't have easy access to a truck AND the desk is heavy as . he meticulously brought the desk in the house with furniture dollies and packing blankets and was awesome about it all. (the last time someone hauled something into our house {new fridge} they managed to scrape the pergo floor, rip the linoleum in the kitchen, chip the concrete on the porch and bang up for the door frame). so i was so impressed and grateful with the way he brought this behemoth of a desk into our home.

i love it. it's all mad men-y and awesome. we have lots of clashing greens and turquoises in the room now, so i need to figure out how to tie it all in. i still need to file away all my goodies into the 7 (!) drawers.

i have always had a deep rooted love for desks and stationery supplies (i'm channeling my grandpa butch). stamps, pens, papers, staplers, typewriters, tape, erasers. i love it all. i still have some work to do in the office, so i'll be sure to post more pictures when it's finished.

-website w/ restored steel furniture
-and another one

china hutch

i spotted this china hutch at an estate sale more than a month ago. i couldn't afford their asking price, so that was that. i left my name/number in case they were willing to let it go for less. over the next few days, i COULD NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. i found the craiglist ad for the estate sale and contacted the lady to see if it was still available. it was! and she'd come down on the price! i told her i'd have to wait for a break in rollum's schedule (and for my neighbor's truck) to pick it up. he's been so busy that finally, her husband offered to drop it off. so i got this bad boy on monday. I LOVE IT. we took our ikea table out, brought the our vintage metal table back in (and covered it with this rad tablecloth my friend liz gave me for my birthday) = kitchen makeover! now i have to fill the hutch with goodies, which will require a big cabinet sort-through - i will display some things that have been hidden and whatnot. we may be looking to get rid of the ikea table, so if you know of anyone...
isn't it funny how much the color changes depending on flash/no flash?

yard sale treasures

i had good yard sale luck today. woke up around 10:30 and searched for "smyrna garage sales" on craiglist, and here's what i got:

first stop: sam davis road; a woman and her daugher, around my age. lots of cool antique-y stuff. i was just going to buy the bird salt & pepper shakers and the yellow glass thing; i liked the painting but part of me wondered if it was a little too "motel art" or "bob ross." (I was laughing at myself for thinking so hard about whether or not i wanted to spend $2 on it). the daughter ended up selling me the painting and the other goodies for $2.75 (!?). the woman said her aunt painted it in the 1920s; her name was lola and she lived to be almost 100. i told her i'd hang it in my computer room. after i heard the backstory about lola, i grew to love the painting and wish i had paid them more for my goodies.

next i ended up off hazelwood; it was an old lady in an electric wheelchair and her husband. she talked at length about her health and how this would probably be the last garage sale she had. also how her daughter owns a salon and wanted to re-do the colors, so there were some salon hair dryers for sale. she had lots of owls for sale & i picked out the coolest ones - 25 cents each! and a plastic purity milk crate for 50 cents.
(yellow glass was from the first yard sale)

i love all my goodies! but i need to watch this owl collection i seem to have started. reminds me of the sorority girl roommate i had in 1997; she was in chi omega and had an entire bookshelf filled with hundreds of owls (i guess that's their "symbol"?) this was the apartment i also shared with a chinese girl who cooked chicken claws.

pretty colors

i love this color palette & this may prove to be a good source of inspiration when it comes time to paint the living room. maybe a nice blue-tinted grey for the walls? we already have a yellow painted cabinet (which holds our growing record collection, thanks to R's employment at grimey's)...and the kitchen is grey, so it would flow well.


from mel smith designs, via print & pattern

to-do list

it's saturday morning and i thought i'd make a list of things i'd like to accomplish this weekend. i have severe motivation problems. so bad that sometimes i end up watching the 'america's next top model' marathon on vh1 for 3 hours. that's bad. so maybe this will help keep me in line, since i'll have a place to report back to on my accomplishments (and failures). lord knows i don't want to tell you that i spent my saturday evening watching "home alone" on fx.

• go to ymca (potential excuse: R has my ipod)
• organize office (potential excuse: i'm too overwhelmed by the piles of CD-R's and books)
• sort through receipts for taxes (potential excuse: it's boring. and somewhat depressing to see what we spent our money on for an entire year)

 here's the office. i need a curtain for that window. 

last week i took a boring laminate bookshelf and covered it in wrapping paper. i need to figure out if i should keep it in the bedroom or bring it into the office.